More than 200 years ago, Mr. Artus, a dentist and fossil collector in California, received some broken animal teeth and lumbar spine fossils. He did not know what kind of animal it was, so he sent it to the State Museum, and it was not until 1888 that the famous paleontologist Marsh named it a solodont based on several columnar structures peculiar to its tooth crown.
The solodont weighs up to 200 to 300 kg, has thick limbs but is not strong enough, has broad feet and primitive hooves, has a special sternum structure, has a skull similar to a long jawed mastodon, its incisors are developed, and the buccal teeth are composed of vertical and thick enamel columns. According to this, paleontologist Reinhall officially established the order Zonotodontis in 1953.
Since the discovery of the fossil of the toothed beast, there has been much debate about its living form. Marsh, Tokunaga Shigeyasu, Reinhall, etc. have all made statements, but they have all been overthrown. In the 1980s, the Japanese scholar Shikio Shikama was quite representative, arguing that from the limbs of the toothed beast, the animal was not good at walking on land, but was good at potential underwater glides. They mainly use their jaws to stick to the shallower seabed, pedaling forward on the hind feet, with special sternums supporting the weight of the back half of the body, while the forelimbs play the role of support, paddle and rudder. Another Japanese scholar, Inuzuka, reconstructed the modal model of the thorodon, which had crocodile-like muscles, a smooth body, and no swimming fins. They have short, thick hairs around their mouths, a long nose, and ears, nostrils, and eyes that are almost on the same plane like hippopotamus.
In people's eyes, the appearance and disappearance of the toothed beasts is like a strange phantom. Researchers disagree as to why they went extinct. Fossils of Zoodonts show that they tend to coexist with some large sharks, were they destroyed by these sea kings? Changes in the temperature and salinity of the sea lead to food shortages, which will also promote the extinction of the toothless
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